The UK Native Seed Hub (UKNSH) is a project of the

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. An internationally important botanical research and education institution, it employs 1,100 ...

Millennium Seed Bank Partnership The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership (MSBP or MSB), formerly known as the Millennium Seed Bank Project, is the largest ''ex situ'' plant conservation programme in the world coordinated by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. After being awarded a Mi ...

growing and distributing seeds of UK native plant species. It is in part a response to the 2010 report Making Space for Nature by Sir John Lawton. The project, located at

Wakehurst Place Wakehurst, previously known as Wakehurst Place, is a house and botanic gardens in West Sussex, England, owned by the National Trust but used and managed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. It is near Ardingly, West Sussex in the High Weald (g ...

, in

West Sussex West Sussex is a county in South East England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the shire districts of Adur, Arun, Chichester, Horsham, and Mid Sussex, and the boroughs of Crawley and Worthing. Covering an ar ...

, in the

High Weald High may refer to: Science and technology * Height * High (atmospheric), a high-pressure area * High (computability), a quality of a Turing degree, in computability theory * High (tectonics), in geology an area where relative tectonic uplift t ...

of southern

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

(), is dedicated to enhancing the resilience and coherence of the UK's

ecological network An ecological network is a representation of the biotic interactions in an ecosystem, in which species (nodes) are connected by pairwise interactions (links). These interactions can be trophic or symbiotic. Ecological networks are used to describe ...

s by improving the quality, quantity, and diversity of UK seed species available for use in conservation, rehabilitation, and restoration projects. The UKNSH makes available to conservation and restoration projects high quality Millennium Seed Bank seed collections, some of which are of species that are not available on the commercial seed market, and some are local provenance collections of species already available. As part of the Royal Botanic Gardens, the UKNSH is a

nonprofit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

UKNSH License Agreement
/ref> which provides seeds under a license agreement, ensuring use of the seed only for projects that directly support UK biodiversity and at a charge that only recoups the financial cost of recollection to replace seeds in the bank. The provision of seed may be accompanied by technical training, advice and research that enable users of the seed and other commercial seed suppliers to improve the knowledge, use, and storage of native seed in the UK.Kew consultancy
/ref>

History

In 2011 the

Esmée Fairbairn Foundation The Esmée Fairbairn Foundation is a registered charity founded in England in 1961. It is one of the larger independent grant-making foundations based in the UK, funding organisations which aim to improve the quality of life for people and communit ...

gave £750,000 to the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew to establish the UKNSH as part of the foundation's 50th Birthday celebrations. The funding was expected to establish the project over a period of four years. Production began at the Wakehurst place nursery in 2011. In 2012 seed production moved to the new production beds that are on display to the public at Wakehurst Place. Production focused on regenerating grassland species such as ''

Campanula rotundifolia ''Campanula rotundifolia'', the harebell, Scottish bluebell, or bluebell of Scotland, is a species of flowering plant in the bellflower family Campanulaceae. This herbaceous perennial is found throughout the temperate regions of the northern hemi ...

'' (harebell) and ''

Genista tinctoria ''Genista tinctoria'', the dyer's greenweed or dyer's broom, is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae. Its other common names include dyer's whin, waxen woad and waxen wood. The Latin specific epithet ''tinctoria'' means "used as a ...

'' (dyer's greenweed) from seed in the Millennium Seed Bank's collections. In May 2014 suitable seed from the Millennium Seed Bank's collections were made available by the UKNSH seed online list, making it possible for legitimate conservation projects to request seed from the available UKNSH collections.

The Seed Hub

The Seed Hub itself is the Wakehurst Place-based production site, with a capacity of 28 beds on about a

hectare The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is a ...

of land in total, close to the Millennium Seed Bank building and the Visitor Centre (and shown on the visitor's map). The site began construction in 2011 and is maintained by Kew's horticultural staff. Seed production is focused on species that are difficult to obtain on the commercial market, due to harvesting, germination, or processing difficulties. Species are often regenerated to create a large collection of seeds of a particular UK provenance, such as the

South Downs The South Downs are a range of chalk hills that extends for about across the south-eastern coastal counties of England from the Itchen valley of Hampshire in the west to Beachy Head, in the Eastbourne Downland Estate, East Sussex, in the east. ...

' ''

Primula veris ''Primula veris'', the cowslip, common cowslip, or cowslip primrose ( syn. ''Primula officinalis'' ), is a herbaceous perennial flowering plant in the primrose family Primulaceae. The species is native throughout most of temperate Europe and w ...

'' (cowslip), or from a particular environmental habitat. The site is also open to the public as part of a visit to Wakehurst, and provides a useful environment to observe and photograph plant

pollinator A pollinator is an animal that moves pollen from the male anther of a flower to the female stigma of a flower. This helps to bring about fertilization of the ovules in the flower by the male gametes from the pollen grains. Insects are the maj ...

The Seed List

To support UK conservation and restoration projects the UKNSH makes the Millennium Seed Bank's high quality, UK origin seeds available to legitimate initiatives aiming to improve the UKs ecological network. A few of these collections are supplied from the production beds at Wakehurst Place with some being made available from the suitable collections seed bank at the MSBP. Seed is only provided from appropriate collections in the MSBP when the collection is sufficiently large. Where there is not sufficient seed numbers to make a collection available for distribution the species may be bulked up on the production beds. All seed provided is "F1" generation in that is it the offspring of plants harvested from seeds collected directly from the wild. The seed list operates in such a way that the provision of seed to conservation projects will never completely deplete the collection in the bank.

Support

The UKNSH also provides a range of training for seeds producers, collectors, and users. This support ensures that seed users understand the importance of high quality seed of a UK origin for UK conservation work, as well as providing them with the skills needed to use the seed. The support also ensures that appropriate species and provenance seeds are used for the projects location and habitat. Support covers the entire range of seed handling from harvesting, through processing, testing, and storage, to distribution, and sowing. The aim of this support is to improve best practice in UK native seed use. The UKNSH provides advice and services through consultancy to enable the continuation of the project beyond the four year funding of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

References

External links

Official UK Native Seed Hub website
{{authority control Community seed banks Conservation projects Ecological restoration Native plant societies Rare breed conservation Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Seed associations Tourist attractions in West Sussex Agricultural organisations based in the United Kingdom